


Passing Ships.

by Adi



Category: Babylon 5, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Crossover, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-07
Updated: 2010-05-07
Packaged: 2017-10-09 08:38:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/85185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adi/pseuds/Adi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first and only time he ever saw Susan Ivanova was at a party.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Passing Ships.

**Author's Note:**

> Beta Thanks: Thank you ariestess for the late night beta (well late night for me anyway).

_ **FIC: Passing Ships.** _

The first and only time he ever saw Susan Ivanova was at a party where he was doing his best to charm the Centauri ambassador and she looked like she wanted to die. He didn't think it was apparent to anyone else in the room. She said all the right things, and smiled at all the right places. She looked wonderfully groomed and so pathetically sad it almost broke his heart. Almost, after four hundred years he was starting to lose patience with ephemeral pain, and that stung.

He knew who she was, he didn't think at this point there was anyone on earth or in the colonies that didn't. He also knew that it wasn't war itself that turned off the light in a person's eyes, it was what they lost. There were so many ways of dying in a war, for those who didn't want to live, but an image of the Doctor as he had first met him flashed through his mind and he remembered that sometimes people lived anyway.

He watched her for the rest of the night, and when she wandered out to the balcony alone he followed. She wouldn't like games, he decided, but too direct and she would shut down. He would have to play this exactly right, he thought to himself, then he forced himself to remember that this wasn't a game, he wasn't playing, that in her eyes, her pain was eternal and most important of all, he reminded himself that he was still human.

"Nice night," her back was to him, but she didn't turn around when he spoke. "Too bad it has to be wasted with all those stuffed shirts." It was a nice night, but he had seen so many, and he'd see so many more, it was hard to drum up much enthusiasm for it. Maybe that's what made her turn around.

"It is, isn't it," her tone matched his and he wondered what had made her so tired. She looked at him as if she wanted to know the same thing.

"Captain Jack Harkness," he said stepping forward, "and you're Captain Susan Ivanova." He said to save her the trouble of introducing herself. She smiled a little when he said that, but it only seemed to extenuate the lack of joy in her eyes.

"That I am," because she would rather be anyone else right now, and Jack understood that too. He wished they were past this stage, this protecting of broken hearts. He wished she would tell him why she wanted to die, and he wished he could tell her why he could never. She tensed when the music started, but relaxed when he didn't offer to dance. She didn't break the silence between them but didn't outright reject him either. She wanted company tonight; she too, was tired of being alone.

He stood next to her, leaning forward on the railing, a little further and he might slip, he might fall, it might hurt for a while, but eventually go away and he would be the same as ever and forever changed by the fall. He starting to learn to live with immortality, at least it didn't involve insulting everyone in the universe.

"I once knew a man," he said, taking the plunge, "who lost everything, everyone." It was a good place to start, an end. "He never really understood why he didn't die with them, never really accepted it either." She half turned her back to him, listening, ignoring, he didn't know what he was doing, but it seemed to have gotten her attention. "One day he met a girl, a wonderfully ordinary girl, her name was Rose." His voice softened when he said her name, out of habit, out of respect, out of love. "She didn't understand, couldn't really, what that meant to him, but she made him smile, and laugh and want again. That made her extraordinary, but she didn't really understand that either."

"Did he die?" she asked sharply, he looked at her, but now she was standing straight as a board, eyes front, hands clutching the railing he was leaning his elbows against. Showing no weakness, he hated what the military did to people sometimes, if it was the military, he suddenly remembered he didn't know this woman at all.

"Yes," he said, not really lying. "He-"

"For her?" She said in that cutting tone, then she looked at him, and her whole posture collapsed, unable to take the tension any longer. She looked down at her hands, her voice changed, became soft almost reverent. "Did he die for her?"

"Yes," he said, he didn't tell her about after. He didn't tell her that for a time they were happy and the universe was their sandbox. It seemed unfair.

"I knew a man like that too." Her voice was barely audible now. Her eyes, when she looked back up at him, were bright in the moonlight with unshed tears.

"Changed my life," he said, allowing the bitterness he usually ruthlessly suppressed to bubble up in his voice, because she would understand. "Can't die now," he added, because she wouldn't.

"Me either," she said sadly as he stood up straight and looked into her eyes, and he believed her. She might not have been immortal, but she couldn't die and she didn't want to live. He loved her a little then, and it made his heart ache.

He didn't ask for her man's name, and she didn't ask for his. Instead he stood up and leaned towards her, an invitation, an option to leave here tonight with him. She hesitated for a moment, but only for a moment.

Later he let her make her escape by pretending to be asleep. Soon after that he left earth, and didn't go back for a long long time.


End file.
